Hydroformylation involves reacting olefins with carbon monoxide and hydrogen using a hydroformylation catalyst. The product of the reaction process is one or more aldehydes, and perhaps certain aldehyde derivatives depending upon the reaction process. Derivatives of aldehydes include alcohols, acids, and polyols.
Olefins that are used to produce aldehyde products are typically made by cracking petroleum feedstocks, i.e., producing low molecular weight hydrocarbons from high molecular weight hydrocarbons. Cracking of petroleum feedstocks can be accomplished catalytically or non-catalytically.
The production of hydroformylated products from an olefin stream made by cracking or oxygenate conversion processes can be negatively impacted as a result of undesirable by-products coming into contact with hydroformylation catalysts. Such by-products can cause reduced efficiency in the recovery of useful hydroformylation products or can cause the formation of lower quality derivative products.
Traditional industrial olefin feeds contain impurities such as sulphur and the removal of undesirable by-products from an olefin stream can be quite difficult. For example the removal of sulfur, nitrogen and chlorine from cracked hydrocarbon streams; or the removal of dimethyl ether (DME) from C4 or C5 raffinate recovered from a methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) or a tertiary amyl methyl ether (TAME) unit; or the removal of oxygenate by-products, including dimethyl ether, from an oxygenate to olefins unit can require a significant amount of olefin feed pretreatment. It is, therefore, desirable to find methods of hydroformylating olefin compositions which do not require extensive pretreatment of the olefin feed to remove contaminants.